


ghost in the mirror

by lady_laverty



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 00:23:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1919739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_laverty/pseuds/lady_laverty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They drag him out of the cell, the minimal light in the hallways blinding him and leaving him disoriented.  The guards breathing huffs as they half pull half drag him down the hall to another room, throwing him in. He lands in a pile of limbs, his own, before looking up pathetically. His eyesight is still recovering from the lighting change but he sees enough.</p>
<p>  <em>He sees the machine and he knows that he’s never leaving this room again. Not as himself, at least.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	ghost in the mirror

_Step by step, heart to heart, left right left_  
 _We all fall down like toy soldiers_  
 _Bit by bit, torn apart, we never win_  
 _But the battle wages on for toy soldiers_

Toy Soldiers,  _Eminem_

 

It began days after he was dropped into a hole of a cell in somewhere he doesn’t know. He doesn’t deserve to know considering he won’t be leaving there before he’s dead anyways. He’s left in the dark, for days, his eyes adjusting to pitch black that shroud his spartan bedroom. He wonders if he’ll go blind by the time he’s dead.

He wonders a lot of things (but never who he is without Garrett, it hurts too much).

There’s only the most basic toilet for him to piss in. They give him water but there’s no food. He knows this is a tactic to butter him up for interrogation but he doesn’t care anymore. He just doesn’t care.

He murmurs to himself, to fill up the silence that pushes against him in the cell. He mimics Garrett and it makes him feel better, gives him a sense of being even if he sounds like a lonely child. (He is one.)

_You’re a worthless piece of shit, boy,_ he murmurs to himself. It’s comforting. _I don’t know why I bothered pulling your pathetic ass out of juvie_.

\-  -  -

They drag him out of the cell, the minimal light in the hallways blinding him and leaving him disoriented.  The guards breathing huffs as they half pull half drag him down the hall to another room, throwing him in. He lands in a pile of limbs, his own, before looking up pathetically. His eyesight is still recovering from the lighting change but he sees enough.

He sees the machine and he knows that he’s never leaving this room again. Not as himself, at least.

\-  -  -

_“Is the procedure done?” The suited agent spoke to one of the scientists milling about the watch room. “Is it finished?”_

_The man in the room sits staring blankly straight ahead as nurses and scientists take tests and blood to make sure he isn’t about to explode into a million pieces of extremely expensive asset._

_“It’s finished, Director, but we need to keep him for a few days. To make sure it’s kept, you see. It’ll be a week at the most. I’m sure you can wait that long for an asset that you’ve spent so much money and time on.” The scientist mutters as he continues to stare at the readings from the tests being done._

_Phil almost feels angry, but he just finds himself bone tired after looking at the blank man behind the one way glass. Bone tired of everything. Of SHIELD, Hydra, abused duplicitous bastard traitors who aren’t anything anymore. He’s just tired._

_“Call me when he’s mission ready. It better not be longer than a week.” He warns in his most bland voice, fighting to keep a rasp out of it so he doesn’t show signs of how tired he is._

_The man in the room blankly stares at his hands and thinks of nothing but white noise._

\-  -  -

They tell him his name is Ward. But it feels like something is missing, something isn’t finished but he doesn’t question them because they take care of him. Sometimes, in the few days after wakes up in the room, blinking and making slight noise to try and get his point of him being uncomfortable across, some of them smile at him. He tries to smile back at them but his lips don’t make the same smile. When he’s in his room, with his bed and his mirror, he stands in front of it for hours trying to make the same expression. It’s never the same but he tries so hard to make it the same. There’s something wrong with it (there’s something wrong with him), he can feel it when they look at him after he tries to mimic the smile back at them, after hours of hard work exercising and even more staring at the mirror.

He still doesn’t understand when they dress him in black and give him weapons that he doesn’t remember learning how to use. They strap him up and pat him on his back and chest and he smiles his not-smile at them to tell them he appreciates whatever they’re doing for him even if he doesn’t understand it.

They don’t smile back and lead him down more and more halls, to the outside.

He’s never been outside and he stares a bit, at the blueness of the sky and vibrant colours he never experienced back inside. His neatly combed hair flicks a bit and he looks up at it mesmerised by the way it moved without anything touching it. He wonders if he could do that too. Move without being told to or have the near constant hand on his back.

There’s a man waiting for them, up ahead, with a black car and black glasses.

He feels scared for a reason he doesn’t understand.

\-  -  -

Phil waits uncomfortably outside the centre for a good fifteen minutes before he starts to get antsy. He can’t help it, waiting to bring home a known traitor to the only safe place his team has now that SHIELD had been brought down. He didn’t want this, he _needed_ this, and an asset that would do as he said and help them so that his team didn’t need to get into the action? Even better.

That didn’t stop him feeling a pang of something akin to _guilt_ , of all things, when the asset that was once Grant Ward stared wondrously at the sky and the surrounds before his eyes fell on him.

He looks scared.

 He wonders if there’s something, so deeply rooted in his mind, which not even the complete destruction of it could stop him from being scared of an authoritative figure. He wonders if John Garrett broke something irreparable in Grant’s mind that he’ll be afraid of anyone that holds more than an ounce more power than him. Once again he wonders if he did the right thing, giving the go ahead for the procedure to be performed, to get rid of anything that made him Grant Ward.

At least, without his memories of John Garrett and Hydra, he has a chance of making something good out of this shell of a man.

\-  -  -

Ward sits in the back seat of the car and watches his fingers twist and curl with each other. He can feel his fear thrum underneath his skin but he doesn’t voice it. They told him he had to follow every instruction that Director Coulson gave him. His first was to tell him to get in the car and sit quietly. So he does.

He hopes he’s doing a good job. He wants to be good, something inside him craves it, so he willingly handed over his guns and knives and tried to smile at Director Coulson like he had been practicing to. Something twists on his face though, something that makes the smile on his face disappear completely before he scrambles into the car. The Director is talking to some of the scientists for a little while before he gets in the car in the seat in front of him. He briefly stares at Ward out of the rear-view mirror before starting the engine and peeling away from the curb.

He only sits staring at his hands for a few minutes before curiosity overcomes his fear and he stares out the window. Colours and buildings travel by and he stares and stares, trying to soak it up and tries to fill the nothingness that is his memory with pretty colours and buildings and people. Before he knows it, it’s over and they’re stopping. The Director turns around in his seat and begins to speak.

“Before we get you situated in your new bunk, I just want to tell that there is nowhere, _nowhere_ , that you will be able to hid if you hurt or even _touch_ a member of my team, alright, asset?” There’s something lingering beneath his tone so he nods sloppily and all but falls out of the car trying to scramble to attention.

The Director just sighs as the plane ramp opens and grabs his arm to drag him up the ramp and inside.

\-  -  -

It honestly hurts Phil how much that the new Ward doesn’t know. He should expect this considering he had all his memories erased but there are some things that you think must be instinctual. Smiling, for instance, without looking like you’re a doll that just arrived off the assembly line. But it must be something that has to be taught. Something learnt from parents who spend enough time with you that they smile at you and for you.

He doesn’t think Ward’s parents ever gave him even that.

It’s lucky though that the team, minus May, isn’t on the plane because they don’t have to watch Ward follow him around like a puppy, all gangly limbs that he doesn’t know the strength of. He has to tell him repeatedly to go and train or clean his guns because otherwise he’ll sit in the chair in his office all day staring at him and it unnerves him. He’s basically a child, pliant and unassuming, waiting for orders to do even the most basic of things.

He made sure to watch the ongoing footage from Ward’s bunk for at least an hour to make sure he’s asleep before he does go to bed. The scientists told him to keep an eye on him for the first few weeks to make sure the procedure didn’t come undone after heavy emotional stress. He still has nightmares, he sees watching the footage from after he goes to sleep, of what he doesn’t know, but it has him tossing and turning, hands clenching and unclenching, nonsense dribbling out of his mouth as he yells loudly to nobody.

Ward’s clinging and puppy behaviour seems to get worse when the rest of the team gets back to the Bus. Some of them yell and rant at him in his office (Skye and Simmons) but most of them just avoid Ward entirely (Tripp and Fitz). It must be confusing for Ward, to not know why people are avoiding him and openly ridiculing him and his confusion must be driving him to stay close to the only person he knows wont avoid or ridicule him. Which is him, Phil Coulson, Director of SHIELD.

He can feel a headache forming when Skye races into his office, boldly declaring that the traitor had done something _unforgiveable_. He had asked her why she didn’t like him.

Wow, what a bold move for a man who couldn’t think for himself, he thinks in surprise, as Skye drags him down to the punching bag where Ward sits sprawled on the ground with his hand on his cheek. Bright, unfocused eyes stare at him.

“What did you do, Grant?” He whispers at him and sighs. “What did you do?”

Grant just shrugs, looking dejectedly at the floor and Skye hisses like a kettle beside him.

Sighing seems to have become his trademark response, these days.

\-  -  -

Skye pesters him to send Ward out into the field more and more.

_“Fitz doesn’t like him being around, makes him jittery and his leg plays up,”_ she says carefully, testing the waters on how much she can manipulate him into doing. He rubs a hand across his forehead. Ward had barely had a day to himself after each mission he was lent out for, to bring down Hydra. God knows what they did to him, and told him not to tell him about, coming back to the Bus black and blue but scampering back to his bunk without Phil telling him to.

He was learning to do things on his own in the worst possible way but he couldn’t do anything because it would seem like he didn’t believe that he was a traitor.

She lets him talk him into sending him on even more missions even though he can see Grant’s shoulders stooping further and further each time he tries to interact with a team member. He sees how his lack of basic interaction out of missions is doing him more harm than good. He tries to subtly get the team members to speak to Grant, even a little bit, every day that he’s on the Bus. But it doesn’t work. He tries not to think about it too much, making himself available if Grant wanted to come talk himself, but he doesn’t. Grant degrades and degrades until he can barely have his eyes closed for more than five minutes before he’s screaming and crying in his bunk.

One day, though, something must get to be too much because he doesn’t come back from a mission.

\-  -  -

Everything is so _strong_ , Grant thinks as he wanders down the cold alley ways of a city he can’t name.  It smells like freedom and food and smog. He doesn’t want to go back to the Bus. He doesn’t want to be around the people he tried and tried to be friends with. He tried to do everything right so he could be someone that they would want to be friends with. He did everything they asked, even purposely hurting himself so he could have at least one friend that wasn’t the Director but it didn’t work. No matter how hard he tried and tried to understand why they didn’t like him he just couldn’t understand. He runs his thumb across one of the barely healed scars on his stomach from where he cut himself with his knife for Skye.

He doesn’t like hurting himself but he did it anyway for her. He wanted to be her friend and all she did was laugh and sneer at him, calling him traitor and Hydra scum. He must have done something wrong, then. Maybe going on so many missions made him something that she and the team didn’t like, made him something revolting.

He couldn’t win. Not when it came to them. He couldn’t win at all and it makes him want to cry.

His hands are still covered in blood from the last mission he was on and he stops to scuff his boot against a grill on the side of the street, getting rid of the bloody muck on it. He’s still in his assault clothing but luckily it’s dark and there’s nobody on the street. A car alarm goes off and he jumps, skittering to the side, pushing himself to the closest wall. His heart is thumping and he thinks he hears boot steps. _No, no, no,_ he thinks in panic, _I’m not going back there._

He hides himself in the easiest place: a dumpster.

He slaps his hands over his mouth to silence his ragged breathing.

The boot steps are getting closer and closer and closer—

The hinged lid of the dumpster slams open and he curls himself up tighter so as to not be a bigger target ( _run run runrunrunrun_ his mind is screaming at him and tears are streaming down his face, _hide hide hide before they catch you_ ) and whimpers.

_“Grant,”_ the Director whispers.

_Piece of shit, stupid, useless, useless, useless_ his mind whispers at him in a voice he doesn’t know. He clamps his hands over his ears and rocks. _Be quiet!_ He shouts back at it, but all it does is _laugh_.

It laughs and laughs and laughs and he’s slamming his head against anything that is hard enough just to get it to _shut up, please just shut up—_

_“Grant, stop! Stop!”_ the Director is yelling at him, shaking him, trying to stop him and he’s screaming now, screaming at himself, at the world, at his inability to even be a real person.

He wishes he wasn’t even really here.

He wishes he wasn’t alive.

He wishes himself away.

\-  -  -

Phil should have seen the degradation of the procedure sooner. Should have seen how the old Grant Ward was coming out, in ways that weren’t healthy. The way he did what everyone asked, without even questioning it, but not the way that the new Ward did. He did it with absolute mindless intent.

He should have seen this coming sooner.

He should have. Grant was his responsibility and seeing the damage that the faulty procedure had done to him the moment he found him cowering in the dumpster, making himself smaller than Phil could have believed possible, was just the wakeup call he needed weeks ago. The damage he was doing to himself in response to something in his head was panic inducing to Phil, he grappled the man, got him in a non-deadly headlock to keep him still whilst Simmons injected a sedative into his closest arm.

Seeing the damage that he had done to himself that Skye had owned up to asking him to do sent it too close to home though. He didn’t think his team could be _this_ cruel. To force him to hurt himself for the sake of being “trustworthy”, in Skye’s eyes.

_“I didn’t think he’d do it,”_ she tearfully told him when they got him back on the Bus and under sedation so he couldn’t hurt himself or others. _“I really didn’t. I thought he would just leave me alone, but he went away and_ did it _, he cut himself all over because I didn’t trust him enough._ He just wanted to be friends.”

She sobs away in Phil’s office as he wants to cry himself. This whole idea had been faulty from the start. He should never have even thought about doing what had been done to him to another person.

How could he ever have even thought about doing this to another person?

\-  -  -

Grant doesn’t wake up. Even after Simmons pumped everything she had to counteract the sedative into his veins. He just didn’t wake up.

Enough was enough.

_“His brain is fine, he only had a severe concussion after his episode, everything is_ fine, _”_ she whispers to him after she couldn’t get him to wake up and they were on their way to New York to have him induced at a care facility that Stark paid for despite still holding resentment over Phil faking his death. _“His body is reacting normally and his body is performing tasks, but it’s like a coma. But it isn’t. I just don’t think he’s there anymore. I think he’s just…gone.”_

\-  -  -

Skye doesn’t stop crying for weeks after they drop him off, hooked up to life support machines just in case his brain does decide to stop working.

(He won’t ever admit it, but he cried too, at night when he’s about to fall asleep. He cries and cries because he’s not a machine. He has feelings and emotions but everyone thought that Grant Ward didn’t.)

\-  -  -

Phil visits Grant, most months. It’s been seven years since he entered the coma like slumber and never woke up. He sits and talks about how the team is going, how the rebuilding of SHIELD as a legitimate and uncorrupted entity is doing. He reads. He likes to think Grant’s listening, even if he’s not there.

There are pictures all around his private room, drawn by small childish hands with crayons and textas, from Tripp’s little boy to the Fitzsimmons twins. Even Skye’s little girl has a picture up there. A stick man in black with a cape and it made Skye cry when she saw it.

(Nobody talks openly about the man in the private hospice, in permanent slumber. It’s too painful and raw a wound to even think about stitching closed even after seven years. Phil has Grant’s personal affects stored, safely tucked away and untouched. He doesn’t think he would be able to bear it if he found out someone threw away his ID card or his Matterhorn book. It would be too much like sealing fate. That Grant wasn’t ever going to wake up ever again.)

The team was happy and sad and everything in between. They were experiencing a life they never thought they would have, with kids and picket fenced houses and nine to five work days.

He wishes he could have made Grant happy as well. Wishes he could have gotten to Grant before Garrett, given him a life he deserved. But there’s no point wishing for something that never happened.  

(When someone accidentally put Peter Pan in his pile of books to read to Grant, he breaks down crying in the hospice. He puts it away and never touches it again, even after he remarkably has his own child. He will not read that book to his child. It belongs solely to another child that everyone gave up on and abandoned.)

Sometimes when he feels Grant’s hand twitch when he holds it, he pretends that it’s Grant telling him he’s okay, wherever he is.

 

_“Pan, who and what art thou?"_ he cried huskily.  
 _"I'm youth, I'm joy,"_ Peter answered at a venture,  
 _"I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”_

_Peter Pan_ , J.M. Barrie

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, if you got this far! I know it isn't as good as most of the fanfic in this fandom but I thought I would try my hand at something more substantial than most of my other fics. A lot of handwavey and imaginary science went into the last bit so if I'm wrong about something, you know why. But thanks for reading!


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